


This we should learn from the stars

by Daniela_is_not_amused



Series: Dany writes marvel [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Civil War Team Iron Man, F/M, Gen, Hurt Tony Stark, Not Beta Read, Please Don't Hate Me, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Canon, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Star!Tony, The Stars - freeform, The autor regrets nothing, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, no beta we die like men, space, the author is biased, victory/defeat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-19 01:41:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17592326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daniela_is_not_amused/pseuds/Daniela_is_not_amused
Summary: based of this quote/poem by Lana Rafela:"things we should learn from the stars:1) you will burn. but this pyre of yours will light an entire galaxy. is it destruction if it’s creation, too?2) collapse unto yourself. it doesn’t matter. yesterday is light years away and it’s cold can’t touch you now. tomorrow is when you shine.3) the explosion will shatter your bones and no one will hear a sound. it is alright, starsdie quietly, too. but they get up every single time.4) like stars, burn brighter after you rise.5) (always rise)6) the universe is a dark and vast place but there’s always light. find it. if you can’t find it, be that light.7) make sure that the whole universe knows just how beautiful you are when you decideto survive."





	This we should learn from the stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rowantreeisme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rowantreeisme/gifts).



> This work was inspired by @rowantreeisme 's works so you should totally check them out!! They are really good!!!

**You will burn, but this pyre of yours will light an entire galaxy.**

 

Tony’s life can be described as one thing only: fire. Endless, with bright red flames that devour everything - everyone - they can touch and, when all it’s gone and there’s nothing left, they devour themselves a million times over.

 

Fire in his head when a thousand thoughts come running through his mind and don’t let him rest. When he does dream, the fire is still there, in the back of his mind and just behind his eyelids, waiting.

 

Fire in his tongue from expensive alcohol and the smoke of cheap cigars and from all the words he said and shouldn’t have and from all the words he didn’t say and should have.

 

Fire in his chest ever since Afghanistan, since the Ten Rings, since he became Iron Man. Every single breath, every single moment was perfectly interlined with roaring flames that burnt the oxygen inside his lungs and made his muscles raw with pain.

 

Fire all around him, within him, and Tony can’t see an end to it. His mind is plagued by desperate thoughts and, as he learns to navigate life in constant fear, with nothing but his will to set him on fire and feed his soul.

 

(Fire lasts forever.)

 

**Collapse unto yourself. It doesn’t matter. Yesterday is light years away and it’s cold can’t touch you now. Tomorrow is when you shine.**

 

Afghanistan. The Ten Rings. Obadiah. Justin fucking Hammer and Vanko. Fucking Loki and his alien army. The Mandarin. S.H.I.E.L.D. going under. Ultron. Losing J.A.R.V.I.S. The civil war fallout. Barnes. Rogers. Thanos. The Snap.

 

It all came tumbling down in an instant and, despite everything he did to try and prevent it, in the end, he still lost.

 

He’s stuck in outer space with no way to return home. His friends are either dead or hurt.

 

(Not Pepper, though. She can’t be. She’s too kind, too innocent, too good to just die and Tony prays with every single breath he takes that the Universe was kind enough to spare her, the same way it spared him.)

 

He asks Peter for forgiveness. He shouldn’t have been involved. He should’ve never been there in the first place. Tony failed and his failure resulted in the death of a bright, caring, young boy that did nothing but try to help others. Tony failed him just like he fails everyone around him.

 

There’s not much he can do now. There’s no fuel, no water, no food, no way to get back to Earth.

 

“I don’t think I even want to go back,” he said out loud once when Nebula asked him what his plan was.

 

But it was not true.

 

Earth still needs him. His money and his inventions, his will to rebuild and to try and protect whoever was left. Earth had Pepper, and Rhodey, and Happy, and all the traces of Peter existence in his life. Earth is Tony’s home and a son must always return home at the end of the day.

 

**The explosion will shatter your bones and no one will hear a sound. It is alright, stars die quietly too. But they get up every single time.**

 

He records a message for Pepper and hopes that, someday, it will get to her. That she will see it and know that Tony was thinking of her with his very last breath.

 

(He knows it won’t.)

 

Nebula will survive for a bit longer. She still has another full week before her body begins to shut down. Tony, however, doesn’t even has one full day.

 

His mind is a mess, trying to make sense of the dozens of memories and thoughts that rush through his brain at lightspeed. He can hear his mom singing by the piano but her lovely voice is soon overthrown by her pleas of mercy. He thinks of Jarvis’ apple pie and tea at Aunt Peggy’s office; of Rhodey’s laugher and Pepper’s freckles and the way Happy’s eyes light up whenever Downton Abbey is on. He thinks of Peter’s rambling and J.A.R.V.I.S. and You and Butterfingers and Dum-e. He thinks of Yinsen and how he failed him too.

 

It useless to try and fight it, in the end. Tony can barely move now and the dirty old chair he’s propped against is as comfortable as he can get, now that his heart is failing due to lack of maintenance of the heart reactor.

 

(Another bright idea of his that ended up biting him in the ass. He thought he could fight for longer, give more power to the suit but it only ended up killing him faster.)

 

So he takes deep breaths and closes his eyes and lets himself fall asleep for the first time in a long time.

 

**Like stars, burn brighter after you rise.**

 

Tony knows death. He knows how it feels like to die of exhaustion, of internal bleeding, of starvation, of overdose. This doesn’t feel like anything he has ever felt before.

 

He can hear voices. Thousands, millions, infinite voices speaking as one, all around him. At first, he can’t understand them for their voices sound like wood burning and microscopic explosions to his ears but they insist and, soon, their message is clear.

 

“It is not your time, my child. You will come to us, but not now.”

 

Tony thought that he should probably be scared, considering the circumstances, but he wasn’t. His mind was at ease with the presence of these strange entities, as if they had been there all time. Somehow, they seem to have heard him for they laugh, a bright and beautiful laugh, and assure him quietly.

 

“We have, my child. We have watched over you as you slept upon your mother’s chest and guided you as you took your first steps. We lit up the way as you wandered through the desert and as you crawled away from your cold death. We have never abandoned you, my child.”

 

Tony wants to growl at them, to call them liars because no one, no one at all, has been with him for that long but he knows they are telling the truth. The answer comes to him in a flash of light, fast and painful, and he can’t help but to breathe out their name.

 

 _The Stars._ The Stars are speaking to him.

 

He reaches out and feels himself leaving the ground and floating away towards the vast, open space. Still, he doesn’t turn cold and oxygen keeps filling his lungs. A strange warmth fills his insides, slowly but surely, as if a blanket had been wrapped around him.

 

“We will guide you and your companion home so you can defeat the Mad Titan.”

 

Tony cries out, perhaps of relief, perhaps of fear and exhaustion, and they shush him almost immediately, as the warmth around him sips into his blood and fuses all his broken parts together .

 

“You will be fine, my child. You are one of us and we will watch over you.”

 

**Always rise.**

 

The ground beneath him is moving. He can hear Nebula talking to him but he can’t see anything but the darkness around them and a few small spots of light.

 

Stars.

 

The ship doesn’t work but that isn’t a problem for Them. They carry the metal contraption in Their arms, reaching out from all the corners of the universe, as They light up the way. They never stop whispering, not even for a second. Nebula complains about the ‘scratching sound’ and, not long after, she’s on the floor, protecting her ears with her hands. Tony, however, is back on his chair, smiling as his armour solidifies around him and listening to Their instructions.

 

**The universe is a dark and vast place but there’s always light. Find it. If you can’t find it, be that light.**

 

“You are young but powerful. You outshine us all. You will succeed.”

 

They repeat it over and over again, incessantly. A background mantra so soft that Tony can barely hear it but feels it nonetheless.

 

They continue to tell him about everything that has happened since he left Earth. They tell him about the riots, the wars, the sickness and despair. They tell him about the desperate prayers, the fairy tales, the promises whispered in the dark of the night to frightened children by their remaining relatives.

_"Tony Stark left, but he’ll be back for us.”_

_“When Tony Stark returns, the dead will be raised to life, and all will be right in the world.”_

_“Don’t stop looking up. Tony Stark is somewhere up there, among the stars, and when he comes back, he’ll save us all.”_

Tony doesn’t know if he’s supposed to feel happy that people still believe in him or to dread it.

“You are young but powerful. You outshine us all. You will succeed.”

 

**Make sure that the whole universe knows just how beautiful you are when you decided to survive.**

 

His return to Earth is… not subtle to say the least. He lands on top of the Stark Tower (and thanks Pepper that it’s still there, up and running). SI workers come running towards the ship and he can barely believe his eyes when Pepper stops right in front of him.

 

They don’t come near the ship and he doesn’t need the Stars to tell him that they’re afraid.

 

(Fucking Loki and his alien army. Thanos. The Snap.)

 

He goes to them instead.

 

He hopes that they can still recognize him. He’s different now; younger, less bruised, healthier, with a better. far more advanced, armour, and, of course, his eyes are windows to the endless void that is space.

 

(Nebula almost punched him when she saw them. Something about space demons or whatever. He wasn’t actually listening.)

 

“Tony?”

 

“Pep?”

 

She rushes to him, even when Banner tries to hold her back, and she hugs him tight. She doesn’t let go, even as more people arrive, even after Nebula walked out of the spaceship, even after Rhodey limped to them.

 

(Tony doesn’t want her to.)

 

“Tony… What happened?”

 

“I came back. I’m sorry I took so long”, it’s all he can say and it sounds silly, stupid almost, but it’s enough for both of them.

 

He doesn’t say anything to Rhodey, nor to Happy and Banner. He simply smiles and they hide the spaceship before it catches too much attention. They bring him inside and he’s hugged yet again, this time by Thor, by fucking Coulson, and even by May (she knows, she looks at him and she tells him it’s ok, but it’s not, it’s not because Peter is dead and he shouldn’t be and it’s all his fucking fault). They don’t let him alone for the next few hours and he doesn’t know if he’s going insane with all the attention but it’s all too much.

 

He lets himself cry for the first time in a long time. They cry with him.

 

Once the night falls and sleep takes them, Tony rises from his bed and goes to his lab. Everything around him is as he left it, except for a small nest and Pepper’s shoes by the couch.

 

"Friday, give me everything you can find on all of the infinity stones."

 

She can’t give him much more than he already knew before The Snap but this time the Stars are on his side. He was tested and he failed. He won’t fail again.

 

(“You are young but powerful. You outshine us all. You will succeed.”)

 

Nebula stays next to him for most of the time, a grounding presence that Tony had come to appreciate, and Banner is also happy to help him on his mission. He rebuilds all of armours to match his new one (and avoids Rhodey’s questions of how he managed to fix it and his heart-reactor by himself), he reviews all the information he has and, when the time is right, he contacts Wakanda.

 

(“You are young but powerful. You outshine us all. You will succeed.”)

 

Their reaction is expected. They are shocked. They have questions. They want to know how he came back, who else was with him, what happened to him. They don’t even think of asking with what he’s going to do next until Rogers comes around.

 

(“You are young but powerful. You outshine us all. You will succeed.”)

 

Tony hates (hated) him. His morality, his values, his stubbornness but Tony is also tired of fighting petty fights, while the enemy creeps up on them and kills them one by one. They don’t hug each other, they don’t smile and they barely say a word.

 

Everyone can see the striking difference between the two men: Rogers looks… drained while Tony looks rejuvenated.  Rogers’ eyes are cold and empty, as Tony’s remind them of wildfires. When Rogers speaks of what happened, of what he wants to try to bring back everyone, he sounds desperate and confused (mostly, Tony notices, because he doesn’t have much to go on and they are lacking too much resources and information) but Tony’s words are clear and resolute. He knows what to do and he’s doing it, with or without their help.

 

Rogers accuse him of running away but Tony knows better than to fan the sparks this time.

 

(“You are young but powerful. You outshine us all. You will succeed.”)

 

When he finally announces his return, there’s no gigantic masses of reporters and politicians, just mourning children, men and women who lost everything but their hope in him. He marches by their side as children welcome him back with circles arc reactor blue painted on their shirts and adults scream and hang SI flags on their windows and balconies but it’s not much different from their everyday rituals. They show him the murals dedicated to the dead and the ones dedicated to the ones that survived. There’s graffiti of him spread around the world and Youtube is filled of tributes to Iron Man.

 

(“You are young but powerful. You outshine us all. You will succeed.”)

 

Tony failed his people once. He won’t fail again.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.


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